A Midsummer Night's Aftermath
by Mals86
Summary: A look at what happened to the other Welton boys after Neil's suicide - the rest of that school year, and possibly afterwards. Because I am desperately interested in character, this fic will be absolutely lemon-free. There may, however, be some mild cursing (thus the T rating). Thanks for reading.
1. Steven Meeks and the Moon

_The week before Fall Semester Exams, Welton Academy, December 1959_

Steven Meeks closed his American history textbook and let his hands rest on the cover for a moment. There had been a time, not so long ago, that he'd believed without question every word written in a textbook.

Now? He _wondered_ about every one of them.

Except math, of course. Math was solid, it would hold, it just existentially _was_. Physics, too. Hard science was solid ground; you could stand there without worrying whether it would hold you up.

He still wanted to help build a space ship, someday. The Russians had just taken pictures of the far side of the moon, in October. What would it be like, to build a craft that could go to the moon? He drifted, then, imagining the equations. The metal, the radiation, the parabola . . .

He lifted his gaze to the night sky outside his room, where a waxing moon hovered over the fields around Welton. The snow, even trampled and uneven as it was, had gone silver in the moonlight.

 _TO THE MOON_

 _Bush and vale thou fill'st again  
With thy misty ray,  
And my spirit's heavy chain  
Castest far away._

 _Thou dost o'er my fields extend_  
 _Thy sweet soothing eye,_  
 _Watching like a gentle friend,_  
 _O'er my destiny._

The Goethe poem went on, but that was all Steven could remember. _My spirit's heavy chain_. Quick tears sprang to his eyes. His chest did feel heavy now, all the time. It took effort to get up, to walk to class, to study, to eat. Had Neil felt that way?

Did he still feel heavy, being dead?

A quick glance at the clock on his desk told him curfew was eight minutes away. Knox would come in just before lights-out, dreamy-eyed from talking to Chris on the phone, and sigh twice in bed before turning over and starting to snore. Even now, Chris was all Knox could think about.

Or maybe especially now, Steven thought, girls being in every particular preferential to the grind of Hellton discipline without enlivening flashes of Keating, and the heaviness of a world Neil had removed himself from. ( _Why? We didn't know. We could have stopped you, if we'd known. We could have told you how much we valued you, how much we needed you! Of course that's why you didn't tell us, but – why, Neil? Why why why._ )

And English class was a disaster now. It had reverted to that suck-up Cameron raising his hand to answer questions, and the rest of them sitting silent and resentful, not answering unless directly addressed, and if addressed, parroting back as much as possible of what Dr. Nolan had said earlier in the class. It wasn't learning. It wasn't even useful. Nolan the Nose was considerably more pedantic in the classroom than he was as headmaster, and _that_ was damn well saying something.

Steven had always thrived on order, on knowing how to diagram and parse and conjugate, how to set up the equation and work the equation. One idea progressed to another. So much of the material one studied could be logically understood, and if one had a logical brain like Steven, one could tackle just about anything.

But some things . . . oh, some things were inexplicable. One had to _feel_ them – one had to be _open_ to feeling them. It was a truth Steven had known deep down, even before Mr. Keating woke them all up to it. "Lift your heads, lads," he'd told them. "Lift your heads and look at the stars. Look at the moon! You can walk among them, if you like."

Well, Steven liked. And if math and physics could get him closer to the glory of the heavens, so much the better. It was all one universe: glory, plus math.

The Pritchard textbook rubric for poetry greatness felt like it would destroy his soul, if he did more than glance at it out of the corner of his eye. And poor Pittsie, who could work out the physics problems almost as fast as Steven could himself but struggled with anything involving words, had lost a good deal of his short-lived confidence.

The Nose had set them an essay before term exams: identify a poem in the textbook which meets the Pritchard criteria for greatness, and explain why it does so. It was due in two days, and Steven hadn't started it. He'd flip through the textbook and lose focus. He'd hear the voices of his friends reciting poetry. He'd see Neil's face on the blank pages of his notebook.

He kept hearing Neil's voice speaking Shakespeare. He kept thinking about the moon. Gravity and weightlessness and the heavy feeling in his own chest.

The door opened. Knox said, "Hey, Meeks, still hitting the books? I don't know why you bother." He kicked off his shoes, stripping down to his underwear before rooting his balled-up night things out of a drawer.

Steven didn't answer. He got into his pajamas and took off his glasses, then as soon as Knox was in bed, he turned off his desk lamp and slid under the cold sheets as well.

"Meeks?"

"What."

"Seriously, why _do_ you bother studying? Nolan's just gonna fail us. The four of us, I mean. You, me, Pittsie, Todd . . . not that fink Cameron."

Steven had already considered the matter. "No. He won't fail us out-of-hand like that. He'll want us to behave just like Cameron, yeah. Knuckle under and do what he wants, and if we do that, we'll be fine because we will have proved he was right and Mr. Keating was wrong down to the bone."

Silence. Knox was never the most logical thinker. Which boded ill, Steven thought for the hundredth time, for the possibility of Knox making it through law school, wealthy successful attorney father or no. Thank God his own father worked at GE, designing motors for blenders and washing machines and freezers. Steven was both capable and well-suited to follow his dad's engineering profession, and everybody was happy about it.

"I feel guilty," Knox said into the dark.

Steven sighed. "Me too." Thinking of Mr. Keating made his stomach turn over with shame. "Knox, listen. I wish I hadn't signed that paper. But I did it. And you did it. And the rest of us did it, too. We can't undo it. Now we have to . . . we have to live with it, and make the best of it, or we're spitting in the face of everything Keating taught us about reaching for excellence. Which means, I think, doing a creditable job on the shit assignments Nolan gives us and keeping our heads down long enough to graduate."

His brain showed him scenes he would rather not see: Mr. Keating, making them kick soccer balls while reciting bits of inspiring prose. Pitts, kicking the ball, undaunted for once in his life. Neil, wearing that crown of twigs, saying, "If you pardon, we will mend."

After a pause, Knox said, "That makes me feel guiltier."

"I know."

"I can't sleep."

"I know. Shut up, Knoxious." He deliberately used Charlie's nickname for his friend, feeling guilty for that too.

Nine minutes later, Knox sighed twice and turned to the wall. Thirty seconds after that, he began to snore.

That night, Steven Meeks dreamed of the moon – round and shining like a silver half-dollar coin. Craggy with mountains and valleys barely visible from Earth. Inconstant, changing ever in her circled orb.

Just out of his reach.


	2. Cameron, in Denial

After the Keating debacle, Richard Cameron threw himself into academic pursuit as he never had done before. He studied every minute possible: Before class. After class. While changing for rowing. While eating.

This last meant holding index cards in his lap, lest Dr. Hager see them. It was strictly forbidden to bring books or papers into the dining hall. Frankly, Cameron had had _enough_ of rule-breaking, thank you, but the alternative was to sit silent through a meal, or to be ignored by his peers so completely that he felt invisible. He wasn't sure which was worse.

You could sit where you wanted, but the tablemates Cameron was accustomed to were the elite students and their hangers-on. Knox Overstreet was no academic slouch, at least when he wasn't tongue-out slavering over some ditzy blonde townie. But nobody in their right mind would call Gerard Pitts an elite student; he was definitely a hanger-on. And nobody in their right mind could have ever called Charlie Dalton an elite student, either, but he was so well-connected and so popular (and so funny, at least sometimes) that Cameron hadn't minded associating with him. Steven Meeks? A decent student, to be sure, though without any panache. Plus, he'd been Charlie Dalton's lapdog.

Todd Anderson was nothing at all like his older brother, former Welton valedictorian. Now there was a fellow Cameron would have been proud to call friend.

But Cameron knew where he stood with academics and honors: at the top of the senior class. If he concentrated on his standing, on his chase for perfection, he could feel worthy. If he ignored the reason he was the sole holder of the highest grade point average, he could almost forget that three weeks ago, it had been someone else.

It had been Neil Perry.

Cameron had liked Neil – had admired him, to be honest. Neil was a leader in the best possible ways, and as iron sharpens iron, it was good to have the pressure to excel. You worked harder when there was someone to beat.

Neil's suicide was only explainable by Keating's influence. Why would someone who had everything go and waste it? Neil had been uncommonly bright, and diligent to go along with it. He was popular, handsome, friendly, and kind. His hair fell just right; his clothes fit him elegantly. He had influence with other students. He was the best kind of example. Cameron could only understand Neil's giving up his considerable assets and advantages if, somehow, Keating had put the idea of suicide in Neil's head.

Which he _had_ to have done! It was the only way it made sense! There were plenty of things Cameron had never thought about before hearing Keating mention them – and a lot of those things were dangerously weird. Cameron had never approved of the man anyway. He said such peculiar things. And his class structure was nonexistent.

Cameron needed structure. Everyone needed structure, really. Make fun of structure if you want, John Keating! If you were going to be all loosey-goosey with a bunch of teenagers in your class, you couldn't be surprised by the chaos that would surely ensue. Let one student stand on his desk, and they'd all do it. It would be anarchy.

No, Cameron couldn't actually be 100% certain that Keating had suggested the idea of suicide to Neil Perry. He hadn't been there every time the two of them talked, of course. But who else? _Why_ else?

Anderson Minor had the goofy idea it was Mr. Perry who had made Neil want to kill himself. Which was ridiculous. Fathers only wanted the best for you. They were sensible, wise, and cautious. As Davy Crockett would say, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." Of course this silly idea that Neil Perry could abandon his respected position at Welton – the springboard to a respected college and from there to a respected career – for _acting_ , of all things! was literally unthinkable, except by cretins and idiots. Of course Dr. Nolan was right. Of course it was that weirdo Keating who had encouraged Neil to break the rules, to flout his father's wishes, to pursue unsuitable avenues. Of course Keating had to go.

Of course the other boys were smart enough to listen to Cameron's advice to sign Dr. Nolan's paper, too – well, except for Dalton, whose impulsiveness was one day likely to land him in jail. (And where would Dalton go now? Balinhurst, or St. Andrew's? Probably military school, and he'd be lucky to get that. Dalton might even be stuck with his public high school in New York City, which would be a disaster for his career. Well, Dalton had made his bed, and he could lie in it.)

Of course Cameron had been right to take the only sensible course.

It seemed, though, that the other boys disagreed – well, _now_ they did, after he'd saved all their bacon by recommending that they 'fess up to authority about their childish rule-breaking. None of them were speaking to him. Not one of the others who'd been involved in that ridiculous "society" would say a word to him. Not a word! It was unconscionable.

Overstreet went out of his way not to be where Cameron was a lot of the time, and he kept his face turned the other way during classes they had in common. Meeks wouldn't look at him. Neither would Pitts. Anderson, though, was almost worse: he would look at Cameron with silent reproach. Wouldn't say anything, not even to answer a question, but he'd look, and his eyes were so sad.

It made Cameron feel small. And, somehow, as if he'd been wrong about the whole thing. (Not possible!)

The last time he'd looked forward to Christmas holidays so much had been his first year at Welton, when he'd been homesick for his dog and his mother's cooking. He tried telling himself that it wasn't all bad: these days, Dalton's bed was empty and there was no morass of dirty laundry in the bottom of the closet, nobody bothering him when he was studying. Nobody playing practical jokes or bugging him to share his Latin homework or dragging him out to the stupid woods to sit in a stupid cave and read stupid poetry.

Still, the silence was starting to get to him.

At least twice he'd had trouble going to sleep, with the remembered chant about the Congo reverberating in his head. And once he'd had a misty dream in which Neil Perry, wearing his crown of branches as Puck, was saying, " _I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round/Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier…_ " and Cameron had woken in a cold sweat, afraid of Neil's bloody face in the dream.

It had still been the right thing to do. It had. Richard Cameron wasn't to blame. If Neil had looked at his future, the one Cameron was pursuing as hard as ever he could, and decided it wasn't worth it, that was sheer madness. Madness! Keating-induced madness, quite obviously.

It wasn't Cameron's fault. It couldn't be.

Not possible.


End file.
